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The South African Local Government Association has made a ”certain improvement” to its previous wage offer to striking municipal workers, their union said on Tuesday. The nationwide municipal workers’ strike will continue while the South African Municipal Workers’ Union considers the offer.
The pole-vaulting competition at the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki was disrupted on Tuesday when a Finnish vaulter’s crash damaged the measuring equipment. When the event restarted, using a second pit where the equipment was intact, gusty winds hampered the vaulters’ efforts.
Ethiopia’s ruling party has won an absolute majority in Parliament in disputed May elections, according to final results released on Tuesday. When combined with victories by allied parties, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front will control 318 seats in the 547-member Parliament.
Discovery and its crew of seven glided safely back to Earth on Tuesday, ending a riveting and at times agonising 14-day test of space-shuttle safety that was shadowed by the ghosts of Columbia. Discovery swooped through the darkness of the Mojave desert and landed at the Edwards air-force base well before sunrise.
Amid intense diplomacy, Britain, France and Germany circulated a draft resolution on Tuesday, ahead of a key meeting of the United Nations atomic watchdog, urging Iran to stop nuclear fuel work that has raised concerns of a possible weapons programme. But diplomats warned the tactic is running into opposition.
Crude futures edged back on Tuesday after prices had rallied to a new record high at ,27 a barrel. The market was still on watch for potential terrorist threats in Saudi Arabia and spirits remained dampened over refinery outages in the United States. Traders were also awaiting the weekly inventory snapshot from the US.
Kenenisa Bekele and Lauryn Williams, two athletes who have confronted personal tragedies in their lives, raced to world title glory at the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki on Monday. Bekele’s fiancée died earlier this year and Williams won despite her father’s long-running battle with leukaemia.
An Ethiopian court has sentenced one newspaper editor to a month in prison and fined another for refusing to reveal the name of a source who criticised a legal ruling on May’s disputed election, officials said on Tuesday. The Supreme Court found both men guilty of contempt of court and imposed the penalties on Friday.
Members of Zimbabwe’s armed forces have been given farm land and housing plots in a government effort to boost morale among troops, President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday at an address to mark Defence Forces’ Day. Mugabe said his government has made ”tremendous efforts to ensure that morale remains high”.